Biden Teaches Israel a Lesson in Hypocrisy

O n March 21, the Biden administration denounced a recent move in the Israeli Knesset as “a clear contradiction of undertakings the Israeli government made to the United States.” Moreover, in a very rare action, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. was called to the State Department for a dressing-down.

At the department’s press briefing, the spokesman said this:

The United States is extremely troubled that the Israeli Knesset has passed legislation rescinding important parts of the 2005 disengagement law, including the prohibition on establishing settlements in the northern West Bank. . . . The U.S. strongly urges Israel to refrain from allowing the return of settlers to the area covered by the legislation, consistent with both former Prime Minister Sharon and the current Israeli Government’s commitment to the United States. . . . The action also represents a clear contradiction of undertakings the Israeli Government made to the United States. Nearly 20 years ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on behalf of Israel affirmed in writing to George W. Bush that it committed to evacuate these settlements and outposts in the northern West Bank, in order to stabilize the situation and reduce frictions.

This statement is an astonishing act of hypocrisy by the Biden administration, and Americans should understand why.

Between 2002 and early 2004, the George W. Bush administration found that all progress on Israeli–Palestinian issues was stopped dead by Yasser Arafat’s corruption and his support of terrorism. I was serving as the National Security Council’s senior director for the Near East, and when we asked Israel’s then–prime minister Ariel Sharon if he saw any way forward, he said he did. Sharon said that he proposed to remove all Israeli bases and settlements from Gaza, a move which, he told the president, would be extremely controversial in Israel. He therefore asked for Bush’s strong political support. Bush supported the move out of Gaza but told Sharon that there were criticisms that it was a ploy to enhance Israeli control of the West Bank. So, Bush asked for the removal of some settlements there, and Sharon complied: He agreed to remove four very small settlements in the northern West Bank.

In an exchange of letters on April 14, 2004, Bush gave Sharon the support he needed to complete the Gaza withdrawal. Bush’s letter made several important statements: that the United States would impose no new peace plan on Israel beyond what was already agreed; that the United States would “preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to deter and defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats”; and that the Palestinian refugee problem would be solved in Palestine rather than by moving Palestinians to Israel. More relevant, Bush also said that “in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” In other words, Israeli settlements were realities, and the United States understood that in any final status agreement, Israeli borders would reflect their location.

This formal exchange of letters, upon which Sharon relied, was then endorsed by Congress. The United States Senate voted 95–3 in favor on June 23, 2004, and the House of Representatives supported the Bush–Sharon commitments by a vote of 407–9 on the following day.

To enforce his commitment to remove four small settlements in Samaria, as Israelis call the northern West Bank, Sharon had a law passed that called these settlements “closed military zones.” Israelis could neither live nor visit there.

This week, the Knesset reversed that decision. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office issued a statement saying,

The decision of the Knesset to cancel parts of the Disengagement Law brings to an end discriminatory and humiliating legislation that prevented Jews from living in areas of the northern West Bank, which is part of our historic homeland. . . . However, the government has no intention of building new communities in these areas.

That’s what this latest condemnation of Israel by the Biden administration is all about.

Why is this an act of hypocrisy? Because it was the United States, under the Obama–Biden administration in 2009, that claimed that the 2004 exchange of letters and commitments was absolutely of no consequence and not binding on the United States.

There was in fact a debate about the letters, with some Bush-administration officials (including myself) claiming at the time that the United States was welshing on a deal. But the Obama administration was adamant. Secretary of State Clinton said the Bush letter “did not become part of the official position of the United States government.” In his June 2009 speech in Cairo, President Obama contradicted the Bush–Sharon exchange and said that “the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”

Thus, the Biden administration’s denunciation of Israeli action on the ground that it violates a commitment made by Israel to the United States is remarkably hypocritical. The Obama administration had already torn up any such commitment and turned the Bush–Sharon exchange of April 2004 into a pair of dead letters.

The Biden administration is free, of course, to criticize Israeli action in the West Bank, as it did this week, as an “obstacle to peace and the achievement of a two-state solution.” It should not be free, however, to bash Israel for breaking commitments that the United States itself dismissed years ago.